For safety critical applications, electronic devices are classified into Safety Integrity Levels (SIL). For this, failure probabilities and behavior of single devices and the entire system are to be determined.
When monitoring a system of several integrated circuits (ICs) or chips on a, e.g., printed circuit board (PCB), one aspect is to check the connections between these ICs.
For production tests, boundary scans are widely used to check all connections of a system to be tested. As this test requires a complete shut down of the system, it is not adequate for tests during operation of the system.
Another approach for checking connections between chips is to let the application software check if proper values are transmitted. This, however, violates the requirement that safety assurance components must be independent, i.e. cannot be taken out of service by a misbehaving application.
Hence, there is a need for a system for testing connections between ICs or chips during operation of the ICs and/or chips to be tested.